Example sentences of "the [adj] or [adv] [art] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | But as Carl Simonton , the radiation oncologist prominent in the holistic health movement , and others point out , this does not isolate diet as the sole or even the main cause and it is likely that cultural factors , for which Japan is unique among industrialised nations , may be more significant ( Simonton et al . |
| 2 | But in the Cambrian or earlier the chordates no doubt included animals little more highly organized than the contemporary arthropods or brachiopods . |
| 3 | With the reduction in content required to keep them infallible , it seems unlikely that any interesting beliefs about the past , the future , the unobserved or even the present material surroundings could ever be justified by appeal to the basic . |
| 4 | I do not want to go too far into the philosophical or even the physiological aspects of the matter . |
| 5 | Since we are considering a binary computer , multiplication and division of the contents of the accumulator by a power of two can be accomplished by shifting the contents to the left or right an appropriate number of positions . |
| 6 | For those who found this social order irksome — the rebellious , the ambitious or simply the single-minded — ; the village could become a narrow and restrictive prison , dispiriting and mean-spirited , shackling the individualist by the vicious purveyance of gossip and innuendo . |
| 7 | This does not , however , prove that the exclusive or even the main purpose of the decree was religious , i.e. not political or economic . |
| 8 | Those are the more or less the five variations on a theme . |
| 9 | Three major Islamic options are to be considered — the maintenance of Muslim tradition , or the pursuit of modernisation , or the messianic or indeed the modern fundamentalist path of revolution . |
| 10 | But whether you are here for the first or merely the latest time , as you enter the square — better still , as you emerge into it , blinking away the bright Milanese light as you climb up out of the Metro — there can be no doubting its magical ability to conjure a timeless moment of calm from out of the bustle . |
| 11 | This large and important group of plants is represented today by a mere four genera of humble herbaceous plants — Lycopodium , Selaginella , Isoetes and Phylloglossum — living fossils which have survived with little change from the Mesozoic or even the Carboniferous . |
| 12 | Until the mid or even the late 1950s these comparisons were made mainly in a discrete way in the belief that advantages shifted from time to time between one country and another [ Postan , 1967 ] . |
| 13 | But red tape is not the only or even the main problem . |
| 14 | Dividend pay-outs are much lower in Japan and Germany than in Britain and America , but this is not the only or even the main source of returns to shareholders : they receive capital gains ( indeed they prefer them in Japan , where dividends are taxed much more heavily than capital gains ) and , especially in Japan , gain business advantages through shareholdings in customers or suppliers , for instance . |
| 15 | The most probable effect of exposure to light is a change of colour , but this is not necessarily the only or even the most important effect . |
| 16 | ( The ability to make statements without indicating status , which Lyons attributes to English , is not , of course , the only or even the major way in which abstract and neutral meanings can be formulated . ) |
| 17 | We can hardly begin to discuss a novel without summarising or assuming a knowledge of its story or plot ; which is not to say that the story or plot is the only or even the main reason for our interest in a novel , but that this is the fundamental principle of its structure . |
| 18 | Enclosure may not have been the only or even the most potent of the forces increasing and impoverishing the rural proletariat in the southern and Midland counties , but it was impor-tant in bringing many to a total wage-dependency . |
| 19 | He exhibits a number of adjectives which differ in precisely the way required while maintaining the same or essentially the same lexical value ( we modify his examples slightly where it is possible to do so without damage to his case , so as to make the distinction sharper ) : ( 19 ) visible stars vs stars visible the only navigable rivers vs the only rivers navigable a handy tool vs are your tools handy ? guilty people vs people guilty As it happens , the examples which Bolinger uses employ words which can make the distinction a rather subtle one , with perhaps the exception of visible stars ( a group recognized astronomically ) beside stars visible ; but it is quite easy to produce further instances which seem to confirm his view : ( 20 ) a complaining visitor vs a visitor complaining the eligible bachelor vs the bachelor eligible In other cases , the divergence of lexical value between the two positions may be greater but still with the characteristic value for the former , and the occasion value for the latter : ( 21 ) the responsible man vs the man responsible a sorry sight vs the girl is sorry He notes that the acceptability of an adjective in pre-adjunct position may apparently depend on whether or not it can be regarded as indicating a relatively enduring characteristic of what is expressed by the noun , as in : ( 22 ) the faint girl vs the girl is faint an asleep man vs a man asleep This possibility of course depends not only on the adjective itself but also on the nature of the noun being qualified , so that " when one scratches one 's head the result is not *a scratched head but when one scores a glass surface the result is a scratched surface " . |
| 20 | Despite that , there are many cases when hill climbing is the best or perhaps the only practical approach : |